FORT WORTH, Texas — The Columbia Basin Railroad (CBRW), Louisiana & Delta Railroad (L&D) and the Texas Northwestern Railway (TXNW) each received a BNSF Shortline Achievement Award at this year’s 13th Annual Shortline Conference.
“BNSF is pleased to honor these shortline railroads for their ability to provide intense customer focus, resourcefulness, operational flexibility, and a local presence in their communities,” said Pete Rickershauser, BNSF vice president, Network Development. “These shortlines have gone beyond our expectations to build new business for our railroads and new service products for our shared customers. We see their roles expanding in the future as they bring new customers and new products to the rail network, do more gathering and distribution, and assemble blocks of cars for integration with BNSF’s network of main-line trains.”
Cooperation and business growth are two of the major elements to receiving this award. TXNW has significantly increased their traffic on BNSF in the areas of agriculture, chemicals and petroleum. L&D developed a service plan that allowed the railroad to capture a larger share of the natural gas shipping business, increasing their movements from 5 carloads to 21 a day.
CBRW is utilizing its unique location next to the one of the largest airports in the U.S. to develop new markets and increase rail traffic overall.
BNSF connects with nearly 200 shortlines, regional and switch carriers that, together, operate approximately 19,000 miles of track. In the first eight months of 2008, the volume of freight for all shortline railroads increased an average of 7 percent over last year.
